chaos616
Adventurer
Hey amgvr4. Thanks, yea it was pretty good. I was running bushed ball joints on the other end, so i don't know if binding was really an issue. Now I have ball joints on both ends, but I do notice with them in that it is a much more, for lack of a better word, precise ride. As in there is much less axle movement making the truck almost easier to drive, now I just need to work out those steering issues.
As far as EMF goes, clay personally delivered the joints to me here in nevada, very nice guy to talk to and had a good discussion with him and another off road enthusiast who lives in this area. I would definitely buy EMF products again after seeing how the ball joints i purchased were built, very good product so far.
Ok, part 2
So, we started off the next day pretty early, but i had at this point realized my bushings were in a bad way. I checked them out before we left camp and realized soon we NEEDED to change the bushings or (since I didn't actually have my replacements with me) at least do something to attempt to mitigate the issue.
We were in Saline valley, which is a very picturesque part of the park, i urge anyone who has been to death valley and skipped this part of the part to go there. It is "difficult" to get there as there is 1 extremely washboarded road in bad repair to get in, or 2 other routes, both which require probably 4x4 and some experienced off road driving, the route from the racetrack isn't too bad, but very rutted with some rocks and off camber sections. The route via Steel Pass requires 4x4 and some light rock crawling.
We were headed south toward Lippencott pass, a pass which i knew to be somewhat difficult and more importantly extremely rough for my little worn out bushings. As we were bouncing along on the washboard, I spotted an area which was seemingly an old smelter or mill of some sort, probably for the mining in the valley. I decided, as there was a large cemented post in the ground, that I would try to fix the bushings here.
The issue with fixing the bushings is that the truck flexes down so far, that i have to use the hi-lift jack, and the whole thing mind you, to even unload the front suspension, i can do it with a floor jack on a concrete floor with some wood blocks etc, but not out in the middle of the desert.
We pulled in, i assessed the situation and went to work.
I had to use both my own winch mounted on the back of the truck to pull or hold the truck to the right and then use mike beyers winch to hold the truck to the left as we all know what happens when you get a heavy vehicle this hi on a hi lift jack, it tends to tip over:
The truck was really stable and allowed me to get under it to pull the links off and attempt to fix the bushings to at least get the truck down the road.
Once the link ends were pulled, i used the hatched and firewood to cut wooden wedges and wedge them into the torn space in the bushings. FOR YOUR REFERENCE, this does not work, not even in the slightest as the wood was literally pulverised by the weight of the truck, however it made me feel better on the inside
.
Pounding the wooden wedges in:
I did not split the bushings to get the wood in, they were already split and missing material:
Once that was all done, we packed up again, and got rolling, the road wasn't bad, a little bumpy and pretty aweful with ruined bushings, but otherwise not bad. We headed up Lippencott pass for some more off roading:
You can see an off tippy section ahead:
More desert flora:
From this point on, most of my pictures are spent under the truck, you know, nothing like spending your trip under a truck!!! The road up Lippencott was rough, but what made it wose was that the axle could twist forward and back, when this happened the driveshaft would slam into the exhaust or under 4x4 going up a hill, it would twist back really bad and bind up the driveshaft. Nothing like off roading in a truck with bad bits.
We did make it to the top of Lippencott, there were tons of bikes around, wasn't sure if there was an event going on or what. Made me wish at this point I had my KTM with me, would have been more fun than a broken truck.
After that we hit the racetrack, which is only a mile or two from the top of Lippencott pass:
You've all seen the racetrack so I won't kill it, but it was a neat place, and the surface of the plya was odd.
At this point we decided to hit mostly tar roads since my issue wasn't getting any better but we still had to make it to tar, our route of course was via teakettle junction, at this point originally we would have turned south and kept going, but instead we headed back toward ubehebe crater where we started and came up with another game plan.
Wow, look at this guys, look how awesome the bottom of my truck is!!!
Once we were at ubehebe crater, we were on tar the rest of the way sadly but we still had a good trip from there on, here is ubehebe crater:
Just an artsy shot by brittany:
I will update with the rest of the trip in a bit!!!!
Cheers,
As far as EMF goes, clay personally delivered the joints to me here in nevada, very nice guy to talk to and had a good discussion with him and another off road enthusiast who lives in this area. I would definitely buy EMF products again after seeing how the ball joints i purchased were built, very good product so far.
Ok, part 2
So, we started off the next day pretty early, but i had at this point realized my bushings were in a bad way. I checked them out before we left camp and realized soon we NEEDED to change the bushings or (since I didn't actually have my replacements with me) at least do something to attempt to mitigate the issue.
We were in Saline valley, which is a very picturesque part of the park, i urge anyone who has been to death valley and skipped this part of the part to go there. It is "difficult" to get there as there is 1 extremely washboarded road in bad repair to get in, or 2 other routes, both which require probably 4x4 and some experienced off road driving, the route from the racetrack isn't too bad, but very rutted with some rocks and off camber sections. The route via Steel Pass requires 4x4 and some light rock crawling.
We were headed south toward Lippencott pass, a pass which i knew to be somewhat difficult and more importantly extremely rough for my little worn out bushings. As we were bouncing along on the washboard, I spotted an area which was seemingly an old smelter or mill of some sort, probably for the mining in the valley. I decided, as there was a large cemented post in the ground, that I would try to fix the bushings here.
The issue with fixing the bushings is that the truck flexes down so far, that i have to use the hi-lift jack, and the whole thing mind you, to even unload the front suspension, i can do it with a floor jack on a concrete floor with some wood blocks etc, but not out in the middle of the desert.
We pulled in, i assessed the situation and went to work.
I had to use both my own winch mounted on the back of the truck to pull or hold the truck to the right and then use mike beyers winch to hold the truck to the left as we all know what happens when you get a heavy vehicle this hi on a hi lift jack, it tends to tip over:
The truck was really stable and allowed me to get under it to pull the links off and attempt to fix the bushings to at least get the truck down the road.
Once the link ends were pulled, i used the hatched and firewood to cut wooden wedges and wedge them into the torn space in the bushings. FOR YOUR REFERENCE, this does not work, not even in the slightest as the wood was literally pulverised by the weight of the truck, however it made me feel better on the inside
.
Pounding the wooden wedges in:
I did not split the bushings to get the wood in, they were already split and missing material:
Once that was all done, we packed up again, and got rolling, the road wasn't bad, a little bumpy and pretty aweful with ruined bushings, but otherwise not bad. We headed up Lippencott pass for some more off roading:
You can see an off tippy section ahead:
More desert flora:
From this point on, most of my pictures are spent under the truck, you know, nothing like spending your trip under a truck!!! The road up Lippencott was rough, but what made it wose was that the axle could twist forward and back, when this happened the driveshaft would slam into the exhaust or under 4x4 going up a hill, it would twist back really bad and bind up the driveshaft. Nothing like off roading in a truck with bad bits.
We did make it to the top of Lippencott, there were tons of bikes around, wasn't sure if there was an event going on or what. Made me wish at this point I had my KTM with me, would have been more fun than a broken truck.
After that we hit the racetrack, which is only a mile or two from the top of Lippencott pass:
You've all seen the racetrack so I won't kill it, but it was a neat place, and the surface of the plya was odd.
At this point we decided to hit mostly tar roads since my issue wasn't getting any better but we still had to make it to tar, our route of course was via teakettle junction, at this point originally we would have turned south and kept going, but instead we headed back toward ubehebe crater where we started and came up with another game plan.
Wow, look at this guys, look how awesome the bottom of my truck is!!!
Once we were at ubehebe crater, we were on tar the rest of the way sadly but we still had a good trip from there on, here is ubehebe crater:
Just an artsy shot by brittany:
I will update with the rest of the trip in a bit!!!!
Cheers,
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